"Apple today announced it has sold over five million of its new iPhone 5, just three days after its launch on September 21, and more than 100 million iOS devices have been updated with iOS 6, the world's most advanced mobile operating system." The last claim is debatable, but the figures are not - very impressive. Of course, do note that the iPhone 5 was available in more countries than the 4S in its first weekend, and if you take that into account, the iPhone 5 didn't do any better than the 4S at all (which doesn't negate the incredible sales - it just highlights the smartphone market's growth might be slowing). It's also lower than what analysts expected, but they're just monkeys throwing darts at figures anyway.

On one hand you have people making excuses for the enormous sales figures - 5 million units in 3 days, at least half being sheep who mindlessly buy anything new from Apple.

The figures were made up by an "professional" analysts (aka. Apple stock ambulance chasers), they were bullshit before the ink dried on the press release. Put it another way, if I had said Apple would sell 10million iPhones, I would have been called in to question. Why does working for a large analyst firm like Piper Jaffray make it any less speculative?

Then on the other hand you have people claiming how much of a complete disaster selling 5 million units in 3 days is because somebody expected a bigger number.

See the above. The problem is, some people like to chase ambulances for the opposite reason, "hey, look, the Apple is failing, up the <pet-technology>."

So what's it going to be... Are the iphone 5 sales great, horrible, or do "you" think it's time to outgrow the `I hate anything Apple *pout pout*` attitude?

I think, if I was Apple, I'd be quite happy with the sales. FFS, they made a packet and enough people cared (either way) to make it big news. Could have been much worse, especially post Samsung.